It was 36 years ago, on Feb 14, 1990, when the NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft took this image of the “Pale Blue Dot” from 6 billion km away, minutes before its cameras were permanently shut off.<\/p>\n
Carl Sagan, who played a key role in the Voyager mission, famously wrote \u2014<\/p>\n
The “Pale Blue Dot” image was part of the “Family Portrait” set of images taken by Voyager 1 on Feb 14, 1990, from a vantage point 6 billion km away and ~32\u00b0 above the ecliptic.<\/p>\n
Starting at 01:00 UTC after a 3 hour warm-up, Voyager 1’s cameras imaged Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Mars, the Sun, and then Jupiter, Earth, and Venus. The Earth images were taken at 04:48 UTC. The cameras were turned off permanently at 05:22.<\/p>\n
Image data download was completed on May 1, 1990.<\/p>\n
Sagan and other members of the Voyager team felt the images were needed \u2014 they wanted humanity to see Earth\u2019s vulnerability, and that our home world is just a tiny, fragile speck in the cosmic ocean.<\/p>\n
JPL mounted the entire 20-foot mosaic on a wall in its Theodore von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n Auditorium.<\/p>\n
Members of the Voyager imaging team said in a 2019 research paper that the image of Earth on the wall had to be replaced often because so many people touched it.<\/p>\n
Here is Carl Sagan unveiling the Pale Blue Dot image on June 6, 1990 and eloquently describing what that image meant for humanity.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
Even though we are but a speck on a remote mote of dust, Carl Sagan\u2019s words are words to live by \u2014<\/p>\n
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.<\/p>\n
And to stop the ones that would do otherwise.<\/p>\n
Happy Pale Blue Dot Day and Happy Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was 36 years ago, on Feb 14, 1990, when the NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft took this image…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-469577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}